


18 (I Want A Love Like You Made Me Feel)

by blametheone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunk Sex, Feelings, Friends With Benefits, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mutually Unrequited, New Years, harry's a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:17:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7741306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/blametheone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Not every relationship was like Louis and Harry’s. Not everyone fell for each other instantly and completely in a matter of three weeks, not everyone found their happily ever after at sixteen and eighteen. </p><p>Some people had to fall in love, over and over, have their heart smashed, over and over, before they found who they were looking for their whole lives."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Baby, I Don't Want To Feel Alone

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this used to be two separate fics, with a third installment in process. now the third part is almost done and i've rewritten the first part so its all coming together! enjoy...
> 
> WARNINGS:  
> \- i almost added the 'mildly dubious consent' warning because even though he's clearly all for it, zayn is drunk when they have sex which i would not consider proper consent. as i said, he wants it, its cool, but be warned he's intoxicated.  
> \- in case i havent implied how heavy the angst is tHIS IS HOW H E A V Y T H E A N G S T I S okay?  
> \- zayn and liam are both cheating on their girlfriends (cough, sorry, girlfriend and fiance, cough) and i only add this because a lot of people have trouble with that

* * *

 

 

** Jan 12, 2011. **

Liam remembered Zayn’s eighteenth birthday party. Zayn didn’t but Liam did. Louis goaded the boy into having a proper party rather than the quiet night in he wanted, reasoning that the turning over from child to adult by law was an important ceremony that needed to be celebrated ‘properly’. And apparently ‘properly’ was to syphon liquor down Zayn’s throat while music blasted and a small amount of friends crowded around him to cheer the drinks down.

“You’re…” Zayn hiccupped. “You’re great, Liam, you’re just- you’re just real great…”

Liam just smiled as he tucked the inebriated body into his bed, because when Zayn was drunk he pronounced ‘Liam’ like ‘Lim’ and the alcohol in his system had plastered a goofy grin across his lips and Zayn looked like he was glowing.

“I love you,” Zayn admitted, words slurring. “Like, really, truly, proper love you…”

Liam nodded, reminding himself that those words were stemmed directly from the alcohol, and that Zayn only loved him like a best friend or brother he never had. He had said it before – usually coupled with solace for Liam’s insecurities – saying things like love with a heartfelt ‘bro’ tacked onto the end.

But as Zayn thanked him one last time, letting another “you’re great” fall from his lips, Liam walked away and cuddled into the mess of blankets and pillows on the couch that he had set up for himself and pretended, just for a moment, that Zayn really meant it.

 

 

( **Aug 29, 2011.**

Zayn remembers Liam’s eighteen birthday ‘party’. Liam didn’t call it a party but Zayn did. It was a quiet night in at his parents place, all of them coming down to spend time with the birthday boy, armed with cake and determination to make Liam’s birthday a good one.

Liam didn’t have much space or spare room for them to stay, so they had to double up a little, Louis and Harry squeezing onto the one recliner impressively comfortably, Niall taking the couch and Zayn shared Liam’s bed with him.

The house felt silent, and sounded like snoring and restful breaths as Zayn pretended his fingers weren’t literally an inch away from Liam’s palm.

“Happy Birthday, Liam,” he mumbled instead. Liam’s eyes blinked open, face pushed into the pillow, and he smiled.

“Thanks, Zayn.”

About halfway through the night (or, morning), Zayn woke up to find he had accidentally attached himself to Liam’s chest. Or… something. He thought it was him, at least, but he was lying exactly here he had gone to sleep, it was _Liam_ who had moved over in his sleep.

And if anyone asked Zayn, he had been sleeping the entire night and hadn’t even noticed Liam’s arms wrapping around him like a security blanket, he had been peacefully dreaming of something indescribable and doing _anything_ but cherishing those moments in Liam’s hold as he drifted back to sleep. If anyone asked.)

 

** Dec 12, 2011. **

Liam remembers feeling eighteen and carefree as they drank spiced rum and ate an expensive and impressive whiskey-soaked fruitcake courtesy of Harry’s recipe books and Niall and Liam’s combined willingness to fork out the money for the alcohol even though Liam couldn’t drink it. He felt like an adult, in charge of himself for once in his life, but not yet inundated with responsibility as he chomped away at a piece of the whiskey cake (he was allowed _two_ pieces, that was all).

It was just before their tour started, five nights before the first show, and they were counting it as a premature Christmas celebration just for the five of them. Somewhere between a Christmas celebration and a pre-tour congratulations, at least.

He remembers watching Zayn eat the cake and sip at the rum; cheeks pink, ears tipped red and laugh unrestrained.

He remembers the stab of pain in his heart when Zayn kissed Liam’s ear and shouted an offended squawk back at Louis when the eldest wolf whistled and called them out on sexual tension.

Because there was no sexual tension.

Liam and Zayn were not Louis and Harry, they were best friends without the need to fuck like rabbits please and thank you. They both liked boys – so what? Liam had always stood that no matter whether both parties were attracted to one another’s gender or not, a friendship was founded on compatibility and an attraction to the other’s gender did not inherently mean an attraction to the other themselves.

So, there was no sexual tension. Not between Liam and Zayn. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

Okay, there was.

There was one sided sexual tension. And one sided romantic frustration, a pathetic swell of unrequited love, and a whole lot of other things, but that was only from Liam’s end of this friendship and honestly, it was offensive for Louis to assume such things about Zayn. Not every relationship was like his and Harry’s. Not everyone fell for each other instantly and completely in a matter of three weeks, not everyone found their happily ever after at sixteen and eighteen.

Some people had to fall in love, over and over, have their heart smashed, over and over, before they found who they were looking for their whole lives.

Some people lived a life outside of a romance cliché. Most people did, actually. Liam, in the darkest hour of the lowest nights when he actually bothered admitting his feelings to himself, considered himself a single drop in an ocean of many, watching simple relationships and happy endings with a depressing degree of masochism. Other times he just considered himself an idiot with a depressing degree of masochism.

Zayn was smiling at him, at some point in the night. His eyes were soft and squinted in a faint smile – not forced, but fond and tired and warm from the rum, and his skin was genial in both means; physically heated and metaphorically inviting as he leaned up against anyone near enough to him.

Liam had never hated his body more for its faults. He could be drinking all of this away right now, forgetting how Zayn’s skin felt against his arm, so that he wouldn’t remember it later in the night when he was trying to sleep but ultimately consumed with the crave of another person to hold. He could be forgetting that smile. He could be using the excuse of alcohol for the stupid things he said.

“You think too much,” Zayn had poked Liam’s neck weakly, and Liam couldn’t help but agree.

 

** Dec 25, 2011. **

“Merry Christmas, Liam,” Zayn laughed down the phone, voice soft and crackly with sleep. There was a gasp, a soft thud, a groan and a shrieking little girl’s giggle, and Liam was laughing along with her.

“How-” Zayn spluttered, laughing now too, “How come I have two little sisters and you’re still awake before me on the twenty-fifth?”

Liam rolled his eyes. It was true though, he’d been awake for a good hour or so now, the family up for almost as long. They were early morning people, or, at least he was. Zayn was still in bed, Liam had been informed as such.

“That would probably be because you don’t celebrate Christmas?” Liam provided Zayn’s answer, though the whole conversation was more of a jest, they both knew the answer to everything being said.

“That’s probably it,” Liam could hear Zayn grinning, then could hear the little grunt, and, “Safaa! Get off me!”

There was a giggled shriek of ‘No!’ down the phone and Liam sympathised, he wouldn’t want to let go of Zayn either.

There were more noises in the background of the phone, and Liam swore for a moment he heard someone speaking something that couldn’t have been English, and he was taken aback a bit when he heard Zayn’s clear reply to them in something that _definitely_ was not English. He could listen forever in any language, to Zayn’s voice, distracted and distant.

Alas, his mother appeared in the kitchen, where Liam was, and asked for him to join them in the family room for presents.

“Zayn, Zayn!” Liam tried catching his attention. He could hear a muffled conversation in the background but no one was responding to him.

The phone muffled a bit, like someone was picking it up, and Safaa’s voice answered him instead.

“Liam?” she asked, and he replied asking for Zayn.

“He’s…” she trailed, and the giggle had left her tone. “He’s in an argument with our Baba right now… I’m sorry, Liam… He said Happy Christmas, right?”

Liam hummed an affirmative, barely able to answer her while the forefront of his mind was swollen with thoughts of Zayn fighting with his parents. It couldn’t be that bad, right? He probably did something mindless and stupid and it was only a brief reprimand, right?

“Yeah, he did.”

“Do you want me to ask him to call you back?”

Liam smiled. She was such a sweet kid, just like Zayn. She had a lot more fire in her, though, more than Zayn did, which was surprising for such a young girl.

He tossed up the thought. Did he want Zayn to call him back? He normally wouldn’t, but some nagging part of him needed to make sure everything was okay. He knew Zayn disagreed with his father sometimes. Not often, but sometimes, over certain things that Liam probably wasn’t even meant to know about but had slipped out of Zayn’s mouth when he was deliriously foggy with sleep deprivation, or when Louis had gotten a couple drinks into him.

“Yeah, that would be great, Saf,” he said, making sure to keep his voice soft for her.

“Okay, bye, Liam,” she bid, waiting for him to parrot the response and hang up the call.

 

Zayn called him back an hour or two later.

“Hey, sorry,” was what Liam was immediately greeted with as the phone picked up. “Safaa forgot to tell me to call back until now.”

“That’s fine,” Liam waved it off. “Just wanted to make sure you were alright. Saf said you were arguing with your dad?”

Zayn made a grunting noise, then stayed silent for a moment.

“You waited for me to call to check if I was okay…?”

“Well…” Liam blinked, though Zayn couldn’t see him. “Yeah.”

“Huh…”

Huh.

 

** December 31, 2011 (7:20 PM). **

Christmas ended and New Year’s creeped up like an ugly mess one usually attempted to avoid.

 **_louis_ ** _: so we’re dying next year hahahaaaaa_

Liam rolled his eyes. It was the thirty-first today, and he had travelled down to London where they had all been invited to some A-lister New Year’s party. There was a hotel, already booked for him, because he knew that whether he was drinking or not, he was going to be in no state to train home again in the early hours of the morning.

Also. The ‘Daddy Direction’ title wasn’t to be thrown around loosely, okay, he knew he was going to be the mum-friend tonight, trying to keep all his alcoholic toddlers in line.

 ** _liam_** _: better propose to h now then dont want to die unmarried_  
_**louis** : shu up your gonna die a virgin_  
_**liam** : you are_

He was mature. He was totally mature. He was as mature as Louis was. Mature enough to divert the conversation to a sensitive topic for Louis just because he didn’t want to talk to him, for no actually reason whatsoever. Very mature.

 

** December 31, 2011 (11:55 PM). **

_‘Very mature,’_ Liam mused to himself as he walked away from the house, a massive mansion full of tipsy A-listers and way-past-drunk D-listers. And here Liam was, a sober- what? _C_ -lister? A sober C-lister who couldn’t stand longer than two hours at a party without finally throwing in the towel. It wasn’t even the New Year yet, it was only five minutes from midnight but Liam could not take another moment in that place.

He didn’t entirely know why he came in the first place, or why he thought it would be anything better than the most emotionally draining experience of his adult life. He had been an adult for four months. So what.

He didn’t know what he was expecting. To show up and be friends with people? To actually know anyone there? To find some other sober people and have just as much fun with them?

He knew what he wasn’t expecting, though; to see Zayn grinding. To see Zayn, drunk off his fucking tits, grinding. Against a guy, no less, a male with male reproductive organs that resemble Liam’s own male genitalia. To discover that Zayn is not, in fact, opposed to some fun with the same sex. To see Louis pointing between Zayn and Liam with an expression that read, ‘I’m fucking smashed and I think you two should get together because that would be cute’.

Liam didn’t expect any of that.

He didn’t expect the footsteps following him out of the property to belong to Zayn, who was stumbling after him and Liam only waited for him because he was afraid Zayn would trip and hurt himself or something. Liam had self-control. Liam wasn’t at Zayn’s beck and call.

“Where-” Zayn belched entirely unattractively, hair falling in front of his eyes, and stumbled a little while he giggled an apology like it was a struggle to express amusement and simultaneously stay upright. “Where’re you goin’?”

Liam sighed, waved a hand around, noncommittal and indifferent.

“I don’t like parties,” he shrugged. “You know that.”

Zayn’s hair had fallen, he noticed. Liam knew that when they arrived there had not been a single hair out of place in Zayn’s quiff, but looking now that had apparently changed. Which, Liam wasn’t going to be the one to say ‘good’, but he definitely preferred Zayn’s naturally messy fringe hanging down in front of his eyebrows.

“But,” Zayn pouted. “But I like parties. And I like you… so stay.”

As much as Liam appreciated the attachment Zayn apparently had to him, the alcohol was impairing Zayn’s persuasive abilities even just slightly. It wasn’t going to make him stay.

“I’m sorry, Zayn, I’m gonna head off,” he insisted, turning Zayn slowly so he was facing the house. “Go back inside and find someone to keep you safe.”

“No,” Zayn persisted, turning back around. “I want you to keep m’ safe. An- and no one sh’d be ‘lone on New Year’s.”

He reached for Liam’s hand and pulled him down the driveway, marching like he was a fictional character on his way to Oz, if stumbling a little more than the tinman did. It was cute, endearing. Liam followed with a sigh.

Sure, he’d follow Zayn, wherever the hell the kid was taking him.

“You know,” Zayn slurred when they reached the gates and pressed the little button to be let out, Liam sighing because god he loved Zayn but he didn’t know if he had the strength tonight to put up with any drunk-Zayn stories. “I heard once, somewhere, I dunno, it think it was Louis?”

Liam didn’t like drunk-Zayn, yes, but he was still so damn endeared by the way Zayn’s accent dissolved all his ‘th’ sounds into ‘f’ and ‘v’ sounds, how his voice lilted upwards at the end of his sentences more so than usual.

“TEN!”

The call came from inside the house, probably more than a hundred voices all shouting together. The countdown had started, it was almost the New Year.

Zayn looked over at Liam with these big eyes, like he didn’t entirely understand what was going on, but rushed out the rest of his story while the counting continued in the background.

“Any-anyway, I heard that ‘pparently if you’re in love with someone on New Year’s and you don’t kiss ‘em at midnight, it’s like, its bad luck? Like they’ll never love you back or some shit?”

“FIVE!”

Liam’s heart was racing. Zayn was in love with someone? Or was he just talking about it casually? Or – God forbid – did he know how Liam felt for him?

“Mm?” was all Liam managed to force out, voice strained with tension. Zayn smiled up at him, all teeth and crinkly eyes, giggling that stupid half-silent high pitched noise. Distantly, Liam heard the fortuitous, “THREE! TWO! ONE!” chime like a million more drunken voices than it really was.

“Yeah,” Zayn nodded, leaning forward, “I’m not taking any chances…”

Liam was halfway through a ‘what’ and the million synchronised voices were halfway through ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ when Zayn’s mouth connected with his and single-handedly shattered everything Liam ever knew in all the best kinds of ways.

 

** January 1, 2012 (12:15 AM). **

The sex, Liam should have expected. After a certain point between the kissing and Zayn’s spilled ‘I love you’ and realising with a start that Zayn was completely and utterly _fucked up_ and would remember absolutely nothing tomorrow – somewhere in there Liam began seeing sex as a possibility in his horizons. But it still came as a shock when Zayn made a little noise against his neck and threatened to pull Liam’s dick out then and there if they didn’t get to a hotel room.

Liam fumbled with the key because if his brain couldn’t keep consistent and clear enough than how did anyone expect his hands to not be shaking and sweaty.

Because, it’s like this: Liam told Zayn he _loved_ _him_. Zayn told _Liam_ he loved _him_. And now they’re going to have sex. And Liam is agreeing purely due to the presumption that Zayn will remember absolutely nothing at all tomorrow morning. On the presumption that Liam will wake up before Zayn because of his early morning somatic time schedule and lack of hangover.

It wasn’t taking advantage of Zayn for his own pleasure, because Liam would never do that. It was only using Zayn’s impaired memory to have one beautiful night that wouldn’t cause a shit-storm in its wake, Liam was just making his own dirty little secret for himself. He wasn’t the one that got Zayn drunk, he was just reaping the rewards of the situation.

Which, okay, was, yes, ‘taking advantage’ but Liam was eighteen years old and didn’t really know how far the borders of consent reached and Zayn was _clearly_ enjoying himself, so fuck it. _Fuck_. _It_.

He was doing this.

Liam was going to wake up tomorrow morning and leave, let Zayn think it was some faceless who didn’t even know who he was who was only there for a good fuck. He would slink off to the train station and go back home, and no one would even know.

 

** January 1, 2012 (8:30 AM). **

Liam felt guilt seep from his heart and very quickly all around his body, until his blood was drowning in it, as he slowly opened his eyes and found himself staring right back at a sleeping Zayn Malik. Woke to eyelashes, long and dark as always, flush against the smooth tan of cheekbones, lips parted slightly and eyebrows smoothed in peace. Squished collarbones and slumped shoulders. Liam couldn’t see the thin frame of Zayn’s body under the white, hotel bedsheets, but he could feel the warm skin where his hand was resting on Zayn’s hip.

They were closely tangled together, Zayn’s head resting on Liam’s bicep and both of his skinny arms folded up and pressed between the two of them. One of Zayn’s legs was wrapped around Liam’s, knee hooking under the younger’s thigh, pulling them closer. Liam’s other hand was pressed into Zayn’s back, pushing them together.

Liam  _could_  feel every place their skin touched, every expanse of Zayn’s body. He  _could_  run his fingers down everything and imprint it to his memory.

But he couldn’t.

He needed to leave before Zayn woke up. That was the point, he got one night with a drunk Zayn so that no one knew anything but Liam. What a way to start the New Year.

“Morning, love,” he kissed Zayn’s knuckles. “I’m so sorry.”

Liam gently moved Zayn’s limbs and head so that he wasn’t jostled about too much as the younger scuttled away from him and slowly rose from the edge of the bed, searching for his clothes. They had been scattered, slightly. Not far, and it was only a hotel room so there weren’t many places for things to get lost, but it still felt like an adventure to try and find the right clothes on his immeasurable time limit.

“I’m awake, you know.”

Liam was horrifically shocked out of his thoughts as the voice carried around the room. Zayn was awake. Shit.

The younger boy quickly dashed about to get the boxers he saw _right there_ onto his body, moving around the room wordlessly to find pants and his shirt also, trying to ignore Zayn’s gaze following him around the room.

“I remember last night.”

Liam froze, the shirt in his hands slipping between his fingertips and into the floor. His torso twisted as he turned to look back at Zayn.

“You...” he whispered. “Damnit.”

Zayn pushed his face into the pillow.

“Please don’t say it was a mistake,” he pleaded. “Please don’t say you regret it.”

Liam bit his lip. “You weren’t supposed to remember.”

Zayn frowned and slowly lifted his face to look up at the brunette.

“I wasn’t supposed to remember...?” he repeated. “What’s that mean? You took advantage of me being drunk?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be hungover?” the younger coolly responded, picking up the shirt and lifting it into his body, followed by a sweater.

“I am,” Zayn snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Liam picked up his coat, the final layer, and shrugged it on, stepping into his converse that were thrown at the foot of the bed.

“Goodbye, Zayn.”

“Liam-”

The Bradford lad was cut off sharply by the hotel door slamming shut, Liam pulling his shoes on with his index finger hooked in still.


	2. To Be Loved And To Be In Love

** Jan 1, 2012 (New Year’s Day). **

_“Morning, love,”_ Zayn felt a pressure against his fingers lull him away from peaceful unconsciousness and into the throbbing of his brain being split into five separate, hungover pieces. _“I’m so sorry.”_

He distantly registered the whispers as Liam’s as his brain took its sweet time kicking into gear. How much did he drink last night, where was he? Zayn’s eyes fluttered open groggily as Liam’s head moved away, realising with a startle that _Liam was in his bed._ Why was Liam in his bed, _what the fuck did he do to Liam??_

The bed shifted underneath him, rising up as Liam’s weight came off of it, Zayn’s eyes slipping shut as he listened to the light rustling of the younger boy pulling his clothes on and he realised, ‘well, shit, that’s what happened’ as the noise brought his memories back in full force.

Liam’s belt clinking sounded like the bash of the headboard against the wall, the hushed ‘dammit’ as he fumbled sounded like the proclamations of love and pleasure ringing around his skull, and the denim on his thighs sliding together made Zayn think only of the bruises dug into his own that he could feel throbbing dully. All of the sounds Liam made, amplified by the alcohol that was yet to drain from Zayn’s bloodstream, were all painful reminders that they had done _that_.

And that he was running off. Running off before Zayn could wake up, goody two-shoes Liam was attempting to destroy the evidence of his scandal.

“I’m awake, you know.”

Zayn didn’t have to look up from his pillow to know Liam basically shit himself right then and there. Zayn never woke up this early _sober_ , had he been drinking the boy was notorious for sleeping a straight fourteen hours or more. But, that would probably be because usually Zayn didn’t have another human being around to wake him up.

Liam didn’t even bother to make a hurried excuse, just tried hurrying out again, slipping his shirt and jacket on.

 _‘Probably thinks I don’t know who he is…’_ Zayn thought dryly.

“I remember last night,” he mumbled, hoping it caught Liam’s attention, his breath catching to prevent him from adding the hushed “…Liam…” on the end.

Liam was frozen in place and Zayn looked up to see that he was wrong, earlier, when he assumed Liam was slipping clothes onto his upper torso, because he was standing there with his stupid haircut with his stupid facial expression and his stupid pants were hanging loosely around his stupid waist with the belt still undone and his stupid t-shirt in his stupid hands.

“You...” he whispered softly, “Damnit.”

Zayn pushed his face into the pillow, an intense urge to cry rolling over his body – which, yes, was better than nausea physically but he’d honestly take a consecutive twelve hours of hangover-vomiting than watching Liam walk out on whatever they were or wanted to be.

“Please don’t say it was a mistake,” he pleaded, face only slightly turned away from the pillow. “Please don’t say you regret it.”

“You weren’t supposed to remember.”

 _He wasn’t supposed to remember_. Because if Zayn was drunk, he wouldn’t remember, so Liam could get away scot-free with fucking him, that’s how this was going to work. Because if Zayn couldn’t remember, then Liam’s little secret was completely safe and no one would have any clue what had happened.

“I wasn’t supposed to remember...?” Zayn heard his own voice croak out, but he barely noticed between the sitting up and the looking at Liam and the guilty eyes and the wave of nausea that wasn’t from his hangover. “What’s that mean? You took advantage of me being drunk?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be hungover?” he coolly responded, slipping on the shirt and sweater from the previous night.

“I _am_ ,” Zayn snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

But Liam didn’t like confrontation, Liam didn’t do well with being in trouble. That’s why he covered up every Larry Stylinson question in an interview, because he was praised for it. That’s why he followed every rule because Liam didn’t know how to have fun outside the boundaries for once in his life.

It was evident that Liam couldn’t stand whatever the fuck was going on in his own head, to do with Zayn, either. Because he picked up his coat, pushed his feet into his converse clumsily, mostly squashing the backs with his heels.

“Goodbye, Zayn.”

“Liam-”

And then the door was slammed shut, as Zayn quietly finished, “… don’t go…”

 

(Liam blamed the cold air for the feeling of his chest collapsing in on itself as he closed the door.)

 

** Jan 12, 2012. **

Liam mailed his present to him.

It was a box, with two comics he vaguely remembers confessing that he hadn’t been able to find, a new sketchpad of the shitty paper he loves, two individual pencils, HB and 2B, already sharpened on both ends, a bag of sweets, and a little note on each item describing the reasoning of it being there.

_‘Because you think Harley Quinn is hot ;)’_

_‘Because I know everyone else will get you the good quality stuff you always complain about because it smudges wrong or doesn’t absorb the graphite.’_

_‘All sharpened and ready to go, because you’re going to start looking for a pencil in an hour or so, probably’_

_‘All your favourites, I even ate the mint leaves for you.’_

And that was all. A present obviously planned out and bought before the whole ‘ _New Year’s Ziam Having Casual Sex Whilst Lying About Feelings Debacle’_ took place. His mother cooed over how well the boys knew him, Waliyha jeered about Liam being his boyfriend and Zayn excused himself to cry in the bathroom for a minute or two.

Don noticed the red rims around his eyes and didn’t say a thing.

Louis popped in shortly, dropped off his and Harry’s presents and demanded Zayn actually attend the party they had planned between just the other band members. He had a wary look in his eyes when he gave the order and Zayn had a sinking feeling that Louis knew something was up between him and Liam, which just made him want to expel his innards and then cry for a good day or so. Which is something he wanted to do basically every time in the past twelve days that Liam was brought up, and that was a surprising amount. Zayn didn’t even realise how intertwined with his everyday life Liam was.

Niall texted a ‘happy birthday’ message earlier, with a _‘not coming around because I’m seeing you tomorrow but I still love you’_ message tagged on at the bottom.

** Jan 14, 2012. **

Liam didn’t show up to the ‘party’ (Zayn really didn’t want to call it a party given that it was just the band, some beer and Louis’ obnoxiously loud playlist shouting through the television speakers) they were holding in Harry’s hotel room. Liam claimed he was sick, feigning stomach pain, getting Niall to send his message because Louis or Harry would pick up that something was wrong, and Niall was not stupid but he was blissfully ignorant at all the best times.

Louis shot Zayn a look when Niall informed them of Liam’s absence, raising an eyebrow but not verbalizing his questions to the excuse. Harry made the same look, also saying nothing, just passing a couple more beers onto the table in front of Zayn and leaning back into Louis’ side.

 

** Jan 29, 2012. **

Zayn woke up slowly, someone’s fingers brushing into his hair. His first thought was that it Louis, belatedly thinking maybe even Harry, because out of them all they were the most tactile other than Zayn himself. Until, of course, he remembered that he was back home, on a tour break between now and Australia and Louis was over an hour away.

Once that filters through he figures it might be his mum, because she did that a bit with all of them, force of habit. It was how she used to get all of her kids to sleep when they were little, and she still ran her fingers through their hair as a force of habit now. _But_ , the fingers are too big, the touch heavier, than his mum’s.

“Dad?”

His father’s voice hummed, confirming his identity, and Zayn stiffened. He was sleeping on his bed because only a few short hours ago some less-than-pleasant words had been exchanged between his father and him.

“I’m sorry,” Yaser whispered, rubbing his thumb along Zayn’s temple. “I’m still… I’m not used to…”

Zayn didn’t press, just let him babble. It was a constant loop, between them. They would fight, exchange something hurtful that neither of them meant, then they would apologise after a little cooling off, they would be okay for a while and then it would happen again.

“It’s no excuse.”

That caught Zayn’s attention. At no point in this loop had his dad made anything other than excuses.

“It’s nothing but a reason,” Yaser admitted, rocking a little and Zayn moving with him. “And not a good one.”

“You didn’t finish your sentence, baba,” Zayn chuckled, rolling his eyes. “So no, not really…”

Yaser smiled and put his fingers under Zayn’s cheek, tilting his son’s face gently so that could see each other.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, in a definitive tone. “I am. I shouldn’t have said the things I did.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Zayn insisted, and he meant it, he really did. Yaser dismissed him, rubbing a thumb along Zayn’s cheekbone again.

“You’re my _son_ ,” he said, emphasised. “I keep telling you to not be who you are, and that’s something no father should ever, _ever_ say to his son.”

Zayn stayed quiet.

“I promise I’m trying, beta,” Yaser’s voice sounded tight and strained, and Zayn moved his body so he was curling towards his father rather than away. “I promise. I love you…”

“I love you too, baba,” Zayn sighed, his own voice feeling strained. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be.”

 

** Feb 1, 2012. **

**_z_ ** _: its harry’s bday today. if you don’t show up louis is gonna slit your fucking throat on the tour bus._

(Liam shows up.)

(Zayn and Liam both ignore each other successfully the whole time.)

 

** Feb 14, 2012. **

“Liam?”

The last person Zayn expected to see knocking on his and Niall’s hotel door was Liam Payne, with his stupid brown eyes and stupid baggy jeans and stupidly big lips pursed in a stupidly sorry expression.

“Yeah, hi…” he mumbled, kicking the toe of his shoe into the carpet. “Can we talk?”

Zayn wished really badly that Niall wasn’t sitting right behind him, because if Niall wasn’t there he could very easily slam the door in Liam’s face with a definite ‘no’ and then cackle bitterly imagining Liam knocked over onto the floor, rubbing his big, fat nose.

But, alas, Niall was there with a big grin, “Payno! Come in, mate, I’ll piss off then!” with a pointed (and seriously un-Niall-like) glare at Zayn, as if he could read what the older had been thinking.

“Be nice,” he pointed a stubby, pale finger into Zayn’s chest, carrying the glare to Liam as he walked backwards out of the door. “You too. Any blood on my fucking supras and I’m going to kill the both of you.”

Liam sighed as the door closed softly, muttering, “…apparently this band loves to threaten…”

And Zayn couldn’t help himself, okay, he completely, totally, utterly did not mean to spit a, “yeah, but we have good reason don’t we?” straight in Liam’s direction. Definitely.

“Okay,” Liam started. “I deserved that.”

Zayn just rolled his eyes and got up off of the bed, pushing past Liam and heading straight for the mini-fridge, not aiming to pull anything out, rather needing something to do to cover the fact that he was trembling.

“Zayn, please don’t-”

“Don’t what? Ignore you?” Zayn smiled bitterly at him over his shoulder. “Walk out and pretend you aren’t speaking to me? I’d never.”

Liam felt his heart sink. “Zee, please.”

“I thought you gave a shit, Liam, I thought I had a chance for once,” Zayn looked at his shoes with a tense jaw. “Why did you leave, why the fuck did you try and forget? Were you just looking for a quick fuck and thought the drunkest guy at the party was an easy shot?”

“No!” Liam defended, undignified completely.

“Were you taking advantage of my feelings?”

“No, Zayn!”

“Are you _ashamed?!”_

“No!”

“Then _why THE FUCK_ DID YOU _LEAVE ME_ THERE?!” Zayn screamed suddenly, throwing a can of Coke at Liam’s chest, the boy falling back onto the bed he had somehow moved in front of during their dispute. “Why did you look me in the eye _and walk out?”_

“I didn’t know what to do!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Zayn scoffed sarcastically, “Maybe, ‘Hi, Zayn, that was really great, but can we keep this a secret?’?! What about that, rather than trying to leave before I could wake up?!”

“Zayn, please…”

“No, not ‘Zayn, please’, okay?” he was near tears by this point, refusing to look up at Liam. “You hurt me Liam, you fucking destroyed me, and I’m allowed to be angry!”

There was a pause between them both and Zayn finally managed to calm the roaring in his ears to realise that Liam was sniffling on the bed.

“I was scared,” Liam started once he noted that Zayn was finally silent. “Don’t start yelling, I know how shit of an excuse that is, but it’s the truth and that’s all I have, okay? I mean, I was so, _so_ scared Zayn.”

“Then why didn’t you just fucking talk to me?” Zayn pressed, leaning heavily against the kitchenette counter. “Why-”

“I don’t know!” Liam snapped. “I don’t know, I don’t know! Fuck, Zayn, I’m sorry I don’t have all the answers you want right now, I just _don’t know, I DON’T KNOW!!”_

Liam’s breathing had escalated to near hyperventilation by this point, heavy pants drowning out Zayn’s shock.

“I can’t tell you why I did what I did, I’m just stupid, okay, and I’m just trying to fix it! We can’t go back in time and change what happened between us, can we? No! I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what to say to make this better…”

“Tell me the truth.”

Liam looked up with furrowed eyebrows to find Zayn staring heavily back at him.

“What?”

“Tell me the truth,” Zayn repeated. “Honesty, it’s all I want. I want you to be honest and tell me if you really love me and why it’s taken you so long to fix this and what you want to do to fix this and… I want to know why you did it in the first place…”

Liam huffed out a bitter chuckle and sat on the floor with his back against the bed, watching as Zayn moved forward and sat in front of him, waiting.

“I love you,” Liam whispered softly. “I do. But I don’t want to, okay? It’s just easier if… if we aren’t an _us_ , you know?”

Zayn didn’t say a word, just moved his gaze from Liam’s eyes to his left shoulder.

“I did it because I thought I could get my one chance to be with you, and I didn’t have to worry about press and management and whether you actually liked me or not… because I thought you wouldn’t remember it, that I could leave early enough. I was going to leave a note…”

Zayn’s nails dug into the thin bicep of his own arm, lips bitten down hard and gaze permanently stuck to the skirting board behind Liam, refusing to look at him.

“Okay,” he managed to let out shakily, voice tight. “Get out.”

Liam stayed where he was for a moment, lips falling apart slowly and softly, before he nodded to himself, eyes wide.

“Okay,” he agreed. “I-”

“Liam, please,” Zayn cut over, desperate and so close to falling apart, and Liam’s mind was making parallels to the same phrase and same desperation and same closeness and Liam felt his throat close up and bottom jaw tremble wildly.

“Okay…” he whispered, voice too strained to make any noise other than that. “Bye, Zayn…”

Zayn said nothing, a tear spilling over the brim and tumbling down his left cheek, right eye following suit.

And he left, shutting the door quietly on the crying boy.

Liam was sharing a room with Harry, and had never felt so much anger towards the lad, or Bon Iver, before that night. Songs tinkling out of Harry’s phone on his Pandora while he skipped around the hotel room was a normal occurrence, and usually Liam didn’t mind because he had gotten used to Harry’s music taste and found himself fondly snorting at the boy more often than not.

Only, when a high, whiny voice began his rendition of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” Liam wanted nothing more than to throw the phone out of the window.

His face was planted into the pillow, refusing to cry no matter how desperately he wanted to, trying not to make it noticeable to Harry.

_“Morning will come, and I’ll do what’s right. Just give me till then to give up this fight… and I will give up this fight…”_

Liam made a gasping, choking noise against his pillow and winced when he heard Harry’s distinct footsteps stop suddenly.

“C-can you just skip this song, please?” he pleaded, defeated. Harry made a little gasping noise and turned his music off completely, just before Liam felt a body climb in next to him and hold his hand.

Harry assumed it was about Danielle and let Liam pick a station for himself to play, and Liam let out a squeal followed by a wet giggle as Harry blew a raspberry against the skin of his neck in attempt to cheer him up.

 

** Mar 20, 2012 **

“Knock, knock,” Louis called out as he opened the door of Liam’s hotel room, spare key waving about in his hand. “Liam?”

There was a lump on the bed, maybe covers, but probably not given that it was sobbing. Louis sighed and closed the door, leaning back against it. He wiped at his chin, taking in the sight before him of Liam crying into his pillows as quietly yet as violently as he could, not for the first time.

“Niall’s worried,” Louis said quietly as he walked over to the bed. “Asked me to come talk to you…”

Liam said nothing, just sniffed and lifted the sheets a little to meet Louis’ eyes, little cries bursting through his pursed lips. Louis bit his own lip, sitting down next to him gently, gentler than anything Louis had ever done that Liam had ever seen, certainly. He wiped the tears away with his thumb, cupping Liam’s face.

“You need to tell me what the hell is going on,” he stated, demanded, with no room for questions. “You’ve been so distant, Liam, and you’re crying all the bloody time and you won’t _tell_ anyone what’s going on…”

Liam looked away, Louis moving his thumbs to redirect attention back on himself.

“This isn’t healthy,” he pressed, moving one hand to found Liam’s and guiding him to sit up, rubbing his thumb against Liam’s cheek to soothe the wet, stuttered gasps. “Liam, this isn’t good for you, okay? You need to fucking tell someone what the hell is going on. We can- we can fly someone over from home if you don’t want to tell anyone here – Christ, Liam, we’ll get you a fucking counsellor if you need…”

“No,” Liam shook his head, a shuddering breath falling out of his lungs as he brushed at his eyes. “No, just, don’t, please…”

Louis tilted his head, raising his eyebrows.

“Then who do you want to talk about-” he waved his arms about, “- _this_ to? Because I’m not letting you keep this to yourself for another second, Payno, over my dead fucking body are you going to lie down and cry yourself to sleep _again_ , and-”

“I’m in love with Zayn,” Liam said softly, cutting over the top of Louis. “And I messed us up, bad. We… he doesn’t…”

Louis was stunned into silence for a moment, half because he wasn’t expecting to be the person Liam told all of his troubles to, and half because he certainly wasn’t expecting for _that_ to be the reason.

“Y-you…?” he stuttered, seeing Liam’s eyebrows draw again and eyes fill up again and Louis felt the air leave his lungs and he quickly gathered as much of the boy as he could into his arms, rubbing his back.

“Oh,” he soothed, “Oh, Liam… You’re… You’re gonna be okay, love, you know that… You can’t keep crying over a boy, trust me, it doesn’t make it any better…”

Liam let out a choked laugh, one of those crying laughs when something was funny regarding such a dire situation, and Louis giggled along with him, brushing at the short hairs on Liam’s head.

“I’m serious,” he chuckled. “Okay, summer half term, right, got my heart broken by my first every boyfriend and spent the whole bloody week feeling sorry for myself and it didn’t not change anything. I was still single, he was still an asshole and I was still sad.”

Liam didn’t make a sound.

“You know what did change things?” Louis continued, pulling Liam’s head back so that their eyes met. “I stopped and I took a good, long look at myself and I said, ‘Alright, Louis, what’re your options here? You can either feel sad about this for the rest of your life, or, you can forget him, and move on.’”

Liam looked at him, expression open and waiting. Louis grinned.

“That advice did not work one bit,” he admitted with a smile so wide and so contradictory to what he was saying that Liam could help but snort. “But I’m going to tell you anyway because it sounds like the right thing to say.”

Liam sniffed, looking down at his lap, and Louis smiled at him with a big, cheeky grin.

“This is where I would suggest to fill his suitcase with paint or summat, but I don’t know the full story,” he gave Liam a pointed look. “And honestly, he kind of scares me a bit, so I think we’ll hold off just for now.”

Liam rolled his eyes, coughing out a sob. Louis just waited.

They sat up all night, and Liam didn’t really cry at all after he finished explaining, which was nice, because that meant Louis got to tease him for “crying over some little boy, I mean, come on, mate, he’s not really all that,” and Liam gave him a look but it dissolved into a giggle anyway. Liam let it all out, everything, about how he loved Zayn and their wasted hook up and the morning after and their conversation last month and how they had been avoiding each other completely between then and now.

He told him about how he loved Zayn and how Zayn loved him and he clarified why he didn’t want to be with Zayn when Louis looked close to leaving as if he had just realised it was all a joke or something completely unserious. He said about how he had never wanted anyone to know he was gay, especially not management, and that when he had joked hypothetically about it with PR once to see how they would take it he was shot down in the least joking way he had ever heard, reminded of the ‘problems’ they were ‘already having to deal with Louis and Harry’.

“I should have never been a factor in your decision,” Louis had butted in. “You know that? I shouldn’t-”

“But you were,” Liam stopped him, eyes closed and expression tired. “You shouldn’t have been, but this isn’t the normal life. A decision to tell people around me is actually effected by those people. They said that if it were just me that would be okay because my image was already set up, so they could keep it hidden easier.”

He sucked in his cheeks and shook his head bitterly. “Then they laughed, ‘ _thank God you aren’t, though, Liam, too much paperwork._ ’”

Louis sighed, fists clenching and unclenching with anger, the same way he always reacted when their PR team was brought up.

Liam had continued, telling Louis that Zayn had ordered him away and neither of them had spoken since, and he told him that the only real problem is that he realised a couple days ago that he actually wanted to be in a relationship with Zayn and that he didn’t care about hiding anymore. He told Louis how this realisation had come way, way too late and that when he tried talking to Zayn to fix things he received nothing but a shove and a view of Zayn’s back walking away.

 

** Apr 3, 2012. **

Liam thought it was bad enough, and then _she_ came into the picture. Well, okay, she was already in the picture, but now she was unbearable.

They were always running off together, always calling and always giggling. Liam could hear Zayn talking to her on the phone after concerts, his smile wider than anyone had ever seen it and Liam could hear their conversations ringing around in his ears as he bent over the toilet bowl and emptied the sinking feeling in his stomach.

Harry was playing his music again, the same bloody fucking song playing, and Liam vomited to the soundtrack of Bon Iver crooning about how he _found love, darling, love in the nick of time_.


	3. I Have Loved You Since We Were Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE HAVE MADE IT! I HAVE FINISHED SCHOOL AND NOW THIS CHAPTER AND THUS THIS FIC! HUZZAH! *bows*
> 
> i hope you all enjoy the third and final installment (i have given up the prospect of people keeping up with this fic, so this note is basically just directed towards new readers), i'm certainly relieved to have it finished, because i did some math today, and i currently have over 50 fics on the go. :) yay.
> 
> [part one was meant to be primarily liam’s viewpoint, part two was mostly zayn’s (it got really liam-ish towards the end tho oops) and this kind of pinballs between them both, sorry. i’ll probably accidentally favour one of them but i don’t even know which one at this point. there’s actually also a healthy dose of louis’ point of view, so enjoy that.]
> 
> ALSO ITS ALMOST 3AM and as per usual this is un-edited since i have no friends SO I'M SORRY FOR ANY MISTAKES PLS JUST POINT THEM OUT AND I'LL FIX THEM!

The whole tour was a blur.

Somewhere along the lines, Zayn and Liam fell back into place. There was tension, at first, and forced smiles as they pretended to still be best friends if not for the boys or their team then for themselves. It was easier to pretend everything was okay than any other option, be it addressing the issue or sorting through it, ignoring that there was an issue at all was easier.

But somewhere along the line, it was okay. _Actually_ okay. It was okay that Zayn proposed to Perrie, and it was okay that Liam found Sophia, and all the months in between were okay. There wasn’t any fighting, no one brought up the drama, and Zayn wasn’t even aware that Louis _knew_ of the drama. Both of them were completely unaware of the things that they had blabbed whilst drunk, also, all the less-than-pretty things they had said about each other and not remembered the next morning.

They mucked around on stage with each other, still, flirting in interviews as a joke and sitting on each other’s laps as per usual until they were told to grow up. It was like they had gone back to how they were before, crushing on each other and unable to say it but unable to hide it at the same time.

The singing to each other was the weirdest part of it all. Watching a small, hidden part of Liam burst forward – the part that was still in love – and start signing to an equally small and hidden part of Zayn, which was also still in love. But then they would step off stage and forget it ever happened, cage up their parts again and go back to their separate lives.

Louis, Niall and Harry speculated that it was only a matter of time before something exploded, powerfully and probably violently.

 

** March 22, 2014 (1:14am) **

“Liam’s drunk again,” Louis said quietly into the phone receiver, chuckling at the sigh on the other end. “Yeah, I know. I’m gonna stay in with him, yeah, so don’t wait up for me?”

“Okay,” Harry agreed, voice low and smooth and fuzzy with sleepiness. “Be good.”

Louis chuckled, “Never. Love you,” and hung up after the yawned, ‘love you too,’ with a soft smile remaining on his lips.

Liam giggled from the hotel bed he was sprawled across and Louis’ smile fell, eyes rolling and chest heaving with a heavy sigh. He turned to face Liam, as his phone call had been facing the closed hotel door, and set his jaw.

“Liam,” Louis started slowly, as if talking to a toddler, “Why were you drinking again?”

“Ha!” Liam spat, too giggly to sound bitter though the words that followed insinuated that it should have been. “ _You’re_ one to talk, _Lou-weh_.”

Louis closed his eyes and ignored it. It was three in the morning and he wasn’t anywhere near awake enough to handle Liam’s drunken insults right now.

“That’s different, and we know it,” he settled for replying with instead. “Now, Liam, why were you drinking?”

Liam sighed, long and forlorn, and spoke as if he were a princess remaining confined to her tower as he huffed, “Because I fucked Zayn again.”

 _What_.

“You- Z- Sorry, _what?”_ Louis spluttered, blinking, mouth moving before his brain even caught up with the words Liam had breathed. “ _Again?”_

“Mhm,” Liam nodded with the same tone, cheeks pink and eyes red as he looked over at Louis, “Again. Oops.”

He was giggling again now and Louis felt numb. When the hell did that happen, and why the hell had he not been told?? He was _best friends_ with both Zayn _and_ Liam, how had he not known that it was a recurring act between the two, who were both in _steady relationships_ with _women?_

“Liam, when you say ‘again’, do you mean including the first time a few years ago-”

Liam scoffed, hand flapping about wildly with little control. “That’s too long ago, _Lewis_ , no one remembers _years_ ago. I mean- I mean, like, um, like last week? It was, yeah, it was last week.”

He was nodding, very manner-of-fact, and Louis had a sudden urge to hit his head against the nearest wall. Both of their heads, actually.

“You slept with Zayn last week?” Louis repeated for confirmation, which he received in a short nod and a little giggle.

“And again recently?” Another nod, a mumbled ‘Tuesday’ and a sigh. Louis made another spluttering noise and began pacing, because here he was just trying to get his best friend to stop drinking every night and he discovers that two of his bandmates are back at exactly what almost completely ruined the whole band. It took so long for them to even look each other in the eye, let alone speak to each other, and now they were fucking again – more than once. Here Louis was just trying to be a good friend and _this_ is what’s at the heart of it?

“He’s got a really, really nice arse-”

“Liam, I did not need to hear that,” Louis practically growled with frustration, pressing fingers to his temples. “W- just, fuck- _why_ are you two fucking again? You have a girlfriend, Liam, and he’s _engaged_.”

There was a brief moment of silence, lacking of sighs and even giggles, and Louis raised his head to find Liam’s eyes downcast and his bottom lip quivering and all he could think was _‘fuck, here we go again.’_

Liam looked up at him, tears beginning to swell and whimpered, “He’s engaged, Louis…”

Louis sighed as Liam let out soft, aborted sobs, and sat down by him, rubbing at the younger man’s back.

“I know, Liam, I know.”

“I think I still love him…” he admitted, and Louis’ hand froze for a second. He picked back up again before he could think too much about what Liam had said and let his shoulder be one to cry on.

“I know…” he whispered, rubbing at the short hairs on Liam’s head. “I know.”

 

** March 22, 2014 **

Louis laughed at Liam later that morning, watching as he stumbled into tour rehearsals with a bleary head and shuffled strides.

“Shut up,” Liam mumbled, draping himself over Louis’ shoulder, but remembering to keep weight off of him. Louis wasn’t strong enough to hold up a Liam Payne, not anymore. Not even a little bit.

Harry even cooed at him a little, before turning back to whatever he was doing, Niall not even bothering to raise his head. Zayn wasn’t around yet.

“Why do you keep doing this, Liam?” Louis rubbed the side of Liam’s head.

“Why do you?”

Avoidance tactics. Bringing up Louis’ slowly developing reliance on narcotics, or maybe his slowly lessening reliance on food. It was a low-blow, and Liam knew it, but it made Louis stop asking, and that was all that mattered to him right now.

If they were all fucked up, then Liam wasn’t the only one, so he could turn the spotlight away just as easily as the rest of them.

 

** April 19, 2014 **

Perrie was livid. Well, sort of. She was mad, for sure, but at least she wasn’t screaming like Zayn had expected.

“How long?” she sniffed, hand clamping over her mouth to try and keep the sobs in. Zayn couldn’t look, he could barely breathe.

“How long what?”

“How long… has it b-been him,” she swallowed thickly, “O-over me…?”

Zayn didn’t say anything and Perrie choked, chest tight.

“Zayn, no,” she sobbed. “Don’t say always, not before us, please…”

“I’m sorry,” he stepped forward to take her hand. “Pe-”

“NO!” she shrieked, emotional outburst shouting from her lips before she could stop it. “You don’t get to touch me, you _lied_ to me for so long, I thought you _loved_ me!!”

Zayn was crying now, overcome with guilt and the confrontation of what was happening. It was so much in his head to have told her about Liam had she _not_ been his fiancé, on top of already being shaky and emotional with his whole Liam situation, possessing a fear of confrontation, and the guilt of having put Perrie through all of this in the first place.

“It was…” Zayn spoke finally, “It wasn’t always him, Pez… It…”

“Don’t lie to me, Zayn…” Perrie shook her head, hand still over half of her face. “Please, please don’t lie…”

There was a hanging silence where both wanted to speak but neither could, and Perrie forced herself to choke out her words.

“Did you and he, ever…” her eyes were wide, big as ever and rimmed red. Zayn felt his heart stop and his expression gave it all away before the sentence could even finish. A rough sobbed ripped its way out of her chest like she was mourning. Zayn put his head into his hands and answered without looking, he _couldn’t_ look, as she continued to question.

“How many times?”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered, quick to rectify his words when he heard her sharp intake of breath. “Not many, not many… maybe three… I don’t know…”

He knew how many times he remembered being with Liam, but the last two were so blurry from liquor and shame that there was always that possibility it had been more that he didn’t even know of, maybe two nights blurred into one.

Perrie was staring to the left to avoid looking at him, and it felt like a slap to the face, rings and all. Felt like. She would never hit him, never hurt him, she was too precious. He never, ever deserved her.

“W-when…?” she breathed. Zayn still couldn’t look up.

“One time, the first, a few years ago…”

“Were we together?”

He didn’t answer at first, mouth opening and closing and making no noise.

“Y-yeah,” was the eventual confession, and Perrie choked a little. “You… Perrie, I… I was trying to forget him a-and you were… you… then, then he, like…”

Perrie just closed her eyes and made a noise, shaking her head to stop him.

“When else?” was all she said, eyes still closed, and Zayn was finally looking up at her, his own eyes wide and drowning.

“Not again until, like, last week,” he swore. “Perrie-”

“That’s not how you’re meant to treat someone!” she screamed. “I _love you_ , Zayn, I thought we were getting _married_ for fuck’s sake, and all I am to you is a _distraction_ , from _Liam?!”_

“No, no-” he cried, though they both knew it was true. “Please-”

“No, look just-” she stumbled, wrapping her fingers delicately around Zayn’s wrist and burying her face into his chest. “I… don’t want to walk away like this… I don’t want to be m-mad…”

Zayn let his forehead relax into Perrie’s hair, kissing it softly and letting a few tears drop.

“Just…” Perrie sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “I’m going to walk out, a-and go home… because I need time to like… fuck, Zayn, just… just call me, okay? Not soon, but call me…”

Perrie pulled back and cupped his face, brushing at the tears, being careful of the length of her acrylic nails.

“You’re not alone, okay?” she attempted to smile, but it came out as another sob. “You’ve got me, and you’ve got Louis, and your family, and all of those god-awful friends back home, and we all love you, and we’ll all support you, alright?”

Perrie stepped away, squeezing Zayn’s hand a little, and picked up her things with the back of her right hand wiping her cheeks as she went.

“Just don’t call me for the next week, Zayn,” she said, almost steadily, not looking back. “Keep safe…”

The door slammed behind her.

 

** May 3, 2014 **

Since being in One Direction, Harry had learnt that problems weren’t problems until someone outside the band knew. Or, that’s what they were told/told themselves. This in mind, the jury was still out regarding whether it was a good or bad decision to involve a certain ginger and his song-writing prowess.

“You know, if people knew just how many fucking secrets we were holding onto…”

“Are you and Lou really a secret, though?” Ed had shrugged. “I mean, come on?”

Harry, defiant and just barely twenty therefore forgiven for lapses in judgment or decision making, opened his mouth to defend his statement.

“Not talking about just that – we aren’t even the only two fucking each other, Ed, you have no idea how much we have to keep quiet about!”

“Wait-” Ed, sharp as ever, had picked up on the slip. “Hold on, go back to bit about the fucking each other?”

Harry, realising his slip, bit his tongue – not in the metaphorical sense. More like self-punishment.

“You’re not meant to know.”

“But you’re going to tell me anyway?”

Harry, sighing in defeat. Because yes, he probably (definitely) would. Besides, Ed would never tell. The closest he could get to telling anyone is writing an ambiguous and relatively cryptic song.

 

** May 24, 2014 **

Ed wrote an ambiguous and relatively cryptic song.

 

** June 3, 2014 **

Liam heard the song and walked out of the room.

He knew, he _knew_ it was about them, about that New Year’s night, and it didn’t help that Harry kept looking at Ed and Ed kept looking at him and Zayn.

“Liam!” Louis’ voice followed him out. “Li-”

Liam just turned and shook his head at Louis, words not forming as he frantically walked away. Louis nodded just as wordlessly and stepped back into the room with a sigh and a roll of his eyes.

“Liam,” a second voice, one not more familiar but certainly one Liam thinks he might have listened to much more than Louis’, calling out softer and closer, heavy footsteps signalling that he was running up to catch him. “Liam, don’t- don’t run…”

Liam didn’t say anything, eyes meeting Zayn’s with an intent to be rude and ask why the hell he shouldn’t run, until he saw the look, the look that read so clearly, ‘don’t run away from us again’.

“Zayn, you heard it.”

“I know.”

“It’s- you know it’s about…”

“I know.”

“That’s,” Liam huffed. “That’s not us! A-and… I’m not running, from…”

A heavy silence and Zayn’s eyes daring him to say it.

“I don’t like the song,” Liam concluded. “And it shouldn’t matter whether I like it or not – we aren’t like that. You have Perrie, I have Soph, everything is great and I don’t want to sing that song.”

Zayn said nothing, just stood where he stood and nodded. His arms were folded and he stayed stagnant until Liam turned and walked. He just stood and it was driving Liam insane but he wasn’t about to do anything about it. If Zayn was going to stand there and wait for something, he was going to have to wait for a while because Liam, for one, didn’t know what he was even waiting for and Liam, for another, was going to go and get very, very drunk to try and get a handle on this whole, slippery, messy situation.

 

** June 18, 2014 **

“So, kiss me where I lay down, my hands pressed to your cheeks,” Zayn crooned, neck stretched and jaw flinching like always. Jaw flinching, heart flinching, there was no difference, really.

 

** June 22, 2014 **

“So, pour me a drink,” Liam closed his eyes, trying to block out Harry and Ed, both standing in the corner of the room, “Oh, love… Let’s split the night wide open, and we’ll...”

Liam stopped, stepping away from the mic and taking off his headphones in one swift motion to hang them up on the lyric stand, shuffling his way out of the booth.

“L-Liam!” Julian stuttered, everyone in the room in shock as Liam said nothing and looked at no one, head down and feet racing to get himself as far away from everyone as possible.

 

** September 23, 2014 **

“This is too fucking much for me,” Zayn shook his head, cigarette trembling between his lips. “I can’t fucking do this, Louis.”

And, okay, Louis had absolutely no clue what was ‘too much’ for Zayn, he just assumed that somewhere between the touring and the music and the stress of being Zayn Malik from One Direction, and Perrie and rumours and his family and his own state of mind that Zayn was overloaded.

Louis said nothing, just let Zayn sleep in his lap and ran his fingers through his hair.

Because Zayn wouldn’t tell Louis. He didn’t know why, because in every single way Louis’ should have been his first go-to for this situation with Liam. But for some reason, when he watched Liam with Louis, he got this feeling, this gut instinct that Louis knew about what happened between him and Liam. Between Liam’s drinking tendencies and the close, late night talks, Louis knew – Louis had been _told_.

And if Zayn said, “by the way, I’m in love with Liam” he had no doubt that Louis would attempt at playing matchmaker and then it would all just fall to shit, more so than it already had. Zayn, mostly, didn’t even think that was possible – but he wasn’t willing to explore the possibility.

 

** November 17, 2014 **

The album was released and Zayn ignored absolutely everything to do with it. And The Song.

 

** February 8, 2015 **

“Honestly, sunshine? You need to take a _break_ from him, from all of this,” his mother mumbled down the line, voice soft and supportive. “Love, you’ve seen more of him then your own mother!”

“Mum-”

“Well, it’s true! Every interview, every show, every party, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week you are hanging off that boys arm! You need to breathe some of your own bloody air before anything, you know?”

“So, what are you thinking I do, Mum, like? Just walk in and say hey, tour just started but I’m fucking off for a while?”

“I think that’s exactly what you need to say.”

Zayn blinked. “I-… I was joking.”

“I know,” she giggled. “But I’m not. You need a break, Zayn, not just because of Liam. If you bring it up to the boys or to one of the crew, PR, whatever. You need to take a break, you’ve been working non-stop. Come home for a week or two, spend some time with us and your friends, spend some time to yourself to do some thinking. You’re a big boy, now, Zayn, you should know how to take care of yourself.”

 

** March 26, 2015 (11:05am; Jakarta, Indonesia) **

When Zayn leaves, Liam loses it.

Louis, having just suffered the peril of a few petty words that Liam knew he would be over in a day, was in a fit. He huffed in the doorway of Liam’s hotel room, where the younger was packing his stuff and talking speedily into the phone to book plane tickets.

“Thank you,” Liam hung up, slipping the phone down his upper arm and into the other hand with fluked ease. This was when Louis found his opportunity to speak.

“Of course you’re flying off to see him,” Louis rolled his eyes. Liam sighed deeply through his nostrils, feeling the anger bubble up in his chest.

“Yes, I’m flying off to see him, Louis, I want to work things out with him for fuck’s sake!” he zipped his bag shut with much more force than what was required.

Louis’ mouth opened, hands flying up. “Wh- why? _What_ is there to work out and why the _fuck_ do you all of a sudden want to??”

Liam just sighed and threw the packed bag over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, mate, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

Louis stuck a hand over Liam’s chest, stopping him from moving forward.

“Liam, it’s a seventeen hour flight, if you’re lucky,” he spoke softly, not meeting Liam’s eyes. “If you get there as soon as you can from the airport, you’ll get to him at some time after about eleven in the morning on the twenty-eighth. We have a show that night in South Africa, which has to be at least ten hours from London. You’d probably just make it if you never even speak to him.”

Liam looked (and kind of felt) like he was about to cry. Louis knew this, he could tell, but he couldn’t let Liam go running about without thinking about the repercussions.

“I’m sorry,” Louis said, and he genuinely meant it, too. “But you can’t go right now. Give it a week, then we’ve got almost two months off, Liam.”

Liam, frustrated and not wanting to listen to Louis at all but knowing he had to, threw the bag quite pointedly and forcefully at a wall, not seeing Louis’ flinching next to him.

Liam didn’t have to say a word, Louis just left quietly, closing the door behind him while Liam called up and cancelled his flight.

 

** April 5, 2015 **

Liam felt like he was in a daze, completely on autopilot for the next week until the fourth of April, the last day of that leg of the tour. He went home, said hello to the bundle of fur and limbs bouncing for his attention having been dropped off at his place earlier that morning and now starved of people giving him pats and praise, and walked smack into-

“Soph!” Liam exclaimed, not expecting to see his girlfriend – oh, yeah, his _girlfriend,_ he had one of them – in the flat.

Sophia didn’t say anything, she barely even kept eye contact, her gaze coming back up to meet his and then back down. There was no kiss, no greeting, no hello, not from either of them. The silence was unbearable, Liam was almost tempted to start singing just to fill the space where the words should have been.

Sophia, looking down at her nails, managed to do that for him, though, no melody required.

“Do you…” she paused, considering her words. “Do you remember, back at school-”

Liam tried hard not to wince. They didn’t like to talk about school.

“-when… when Tommy, um…” Sophia waved her fingers around trying to remember Tommy’s surname, her eyes pinched shut to assist visual memory. Liam knew exactly who she meant and where this was going, without needing to close his eyes or ‘um’.

“Tommy Greene?”

Sophia’s eyes blinked open, like she wasn’t expecting him to remember – or more to the point, was hoping he wouldn’t remember. She moved on though, getting straight to the point without beating around the bush, because if Liam knew who she was talking about there was no point in a preamble.

“Do you remember when he-”

“Betrayed my trust and outed me to the whole school just because he felt like it, for a joke?” Liam put his carry-on bag down on the couch. “I think I might remember that, what about it?”

Liam had never lied – never could, given she was there to know it – about his sexuality to Sophia. To Danielle, yes, just a little, because it was easier to go about as they did than to expressly have to sit down and have the “I’m bisexual, hope you a) are okay with that, b) know what that means, c) understand that I’m not ‘more likely to cheat’ or whatever the fuck, d) don’t want to initiate a threesome” chat. Sophia, however, attended the very same school that Liam did, and was present to witness The Great Treason of Tommy Greene. Obviously, when she and Liam met again, she couldn’t help herself and asked, “Hey, are you actually? Or was that just teenage confusion?” and Liam (mouthful of he doesn’t even remember what food) responded, “Well, yes.”

Sophia, actually a very decent person beneath the past and her falsified exterior, just hummed in contentment, ate another bite, and asked if she could steal a sip of his drink because she was already finished with her own.

The present day Sophia was continuing with her questioning about things that were not food related, not in the slightest.

“When I heard about,” she waved her hands around generally, “This, the band, I don’t know why, but that was the first thing I thought of. Did you know that? I thought of you, our Liam Payne from Wolver, in a boy band – and I thought immediately of that day at school.”

Liam’s throat felt tight, and dry, and he didn’t know if he could turn around from where he was still bent over the couch, hands lingering on the top if his bag.

“And I never asked because I felt awful for even assuming,” shit, “But I got a text, from Perrie.”

Liam had forgotten those two had each other’s numbers, and now he wanted to kick himself up the arse for forgetting that those two had each other’s numbers.

“And I just need a yes or no, Liam,” her footsteps sounded across the floor, hands gently resting on his skin and pulling Liam to face her. “Were you ever involved with one of the other boys?”

Zayn had said something to Louis, who had said something to Liam, about Zayn and Perrie inevitably breaking up after she discovered Zayn and Liam’s (reoccurring) history together. So Liam knew, in that moment, that even though Sophia was asking him, if she had received contact from Perrie about this situation then she already knew the answer.

Liam, looking right in her eyes, knew he wouldn’t be able to lie to her even if she had no idea. He couldn’t lie, anymore, he couldn’t omit it. Not to himself, not to Sophia, and not to Zayn.

“Yes.”

The word itself was crippling, Liam felt struck. He felt weak. He felt like his hospital days were coming back to him. Admittance was meant to be strengthening, but Liam wanted to crawl into a hole and never, ever, ever come back out again.

Sophia just nodded. A small, forced, bittersweet smile found itself on the corner of her lips.

“Okay,” she nodded again. “Thank you.”

Liam saw the tears come to her eyes before he heard the tightening of her throat. Sophia pressed a piece of paper into his open right palm suddenly, and it was only as she was moving to the front door that Liam noticed all of her stuff was gone.

All of it; no flowers on the table that she insisted on, no sticky notes on the fridge that she left for him to come back to after and between tours, no stupid cat clock she kept on the ledge above the oven. Every trace of Sophia that was usually here in his flat had disappeared.

The door closed with a swift and resounding ‘click’, and Liam opened the note in his hands, not sure of what else to do.

‘If I’ve given this to you then we’re breaking up. It means that you’ve said yes, that I know you were with Zayn, and that you’ve been cheating on me. I hope you find someone, or that things work out with him. Goodbye, Liam.’

Liam raised his head, throat tight and lip wobbly, but there was no escalation of this emotional outburst.

“Okay.”

 

** April 8, 2015 (1:00pm) **

“Liam! We just go back from the tour, we’re not even done yet!” he could hear Niall laughing at him through the phone. “Get some rest.”

“No, but-”

“Bye.”

The phone clicked a little, the line going silent, and Liam huffed maybe a little immaturely.

He had been arguing with himself over the prospect of going to see Zayn for a couple days now, after what happened with Sophia. He had called Niall for advice because Louis wasn’t picking up – because, Liam reminded himself, Louis was a married man enjoying time with his husband who he was not even allowed to look at in public, or any place with a camera.

But Niall’s advice, Liam decided, was stupid. He was going to go see Zayn.

****

** April 8, 2015 (4:00pm) **

“You can’t do that,” Liam said as soon as the door opened. Zayn was tired, had obviously just woken up despite it being well into the afternoon, and his eyes were widened with surprise. There were tell-tale specks of paint all on his finger tips from spraying a paint can. His lips were framed with overgrown, ebony scruff and jaw hanging unhinged.

Obviously, the last person he expected to see there was Liam.

“Can’t do what?”

“You can’t,” Liam let himself into the house, closing the door to lean back against it. “You can’t leave, like that. No.”

Zayn’s eyes narrowed “What do you mean no-”

“I mean I’m not letting you just walk out like this, literally right after springing it on us that you wanted to quit,” Liam fumbled with his fingers, breath coming out of him like it was liquid.

“You’re three weeks late for this speech, Liam.”

“I… I know you’ve been bad for months, Zayn,” Liam continued, ignoring the defensive dismissal. “And I know you’ve been wanting this for a while, I _know_ … but you can’t fucking drop it like that and leave.”

“So, what?” Zayn curled his lip in a snarl. “What the fuck was I meant to do then? I’ve done my fucking days of prancing around on that bloody stage like I loved it, Liam, it was leave or _fucking leave_ and you know it!”

“I _know_ , I _said_ , I know that!”

“Then what the fuck did you want me to do!?”

“ _Tell_ me!” Liam snapped. “That’s it! That’s all! A little warning so that we could have been there to support you, maybe? Spend a good couple of days together before you fucked off?”

Zayn’s jaw was set as he stared at a spot on the wall above Liam’s head.

“Maybe I didn’t want to.”

Liam stayed quiet, Zayn’s gaze tempting him like it was a challenge. Maybe he would take it.

The younger man stepped forward and the older stepped back like a dance, keeping the distance between them constant. Liam sighed and stepped back but Zayn didn’t step forward. The background sounds of London hung heavily around their ears, silence thick and edible between them.

“Why are you here?” Zayn asked after a while. Liam shrugged like it was obvious.

“Because someone needed to make sure you were-”

“No, why are _you_ here?” Zayn levelled him with a look again, and Liam understood.

Of all people, Liam was the last choice to come see Zayn. Logically, they should have sent Louis over given that he and Zayn were best friends and all. Harry has been Zayn’s rock during emotional stress as well, ever since the band first started and Zayn was still finding his feet and they were all working out how they contributed to the band, so Harry was a good choice too. Maybe both Louis and Harry working as a conjoined force? Niall, even, would be better than Liam, bright and bubbly attitude and the lack of cares gave him a perfect mode of conduct to ground all of them – particularly Zayn’s rabbit-like anxiousness.

Hell, they would call _Paul_ back and send his arse over to Zayn’s place before Liam.

“Because I was the one who wanted to go,” was Liam’s reply. “We didn’t all sit around and decide who was going to make sure Zayn was doing alright, you just left and I just followed.”

Zayn felt something in him suddenly struck, a metaphorical sledgehammer right to his sternum that read ‘you just left’ on the handle and ‘I just followed’ on its head. Liam didn’t look like he had even realised the implications of what he had just said.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

Zayn shook his head, walking away, trying to hold all of his pieces together, feeling them slip when he heard Liam’s determined footsteps following him through the house.

“You aren’t the first person to point that out, Zayn.”

“Well, doesn’t that just prove my point?” Zayn almost turned, but didn’t want to give Liam the satisfaction. Or didn’t have the balls to face him. Something like that.

“Don’t walk away from me.”

And somewhere in that, Zayn’s pieces fell.

Something snapped. Something inside of him exploded, powerfully, and probably violently.

“Oh, that’s fucking rich!” he bit, voice ripping out of him in ways neither of them anticipated. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Liam Payne with his death-defying, _stupefying_ , backwards logic! Come be amazed by the hypocrisy!”

Liam’s jaw set, nostrils flaring as he took the verbal onslaught and kept his breathing even all the while. Zayn didn’t step forward, but poked a finger that Liam felt was meant for his chest.

“ _You_ don’t get to say that shit to me,” and again for emphasis. “You _don’t_ get to say that shit to me.”

Liam felt something in him, maybe his heart or maybe his strength, threatening to break. Until he noticed the shaking of Zayn’s finger, the curl of his shoulders and not a breath later – Liam noticed the heart with an ‘L’ in it on the wall behind him, barely visible under the black sprayed over the top of it.

It was red, a deep red. Not like pink, or rose, but _red_. The ‘L’ had gold lining it, and the colours reminded him of the little Iron-Mans on his earpieces. It had been sprayed over, angrily – once, twice, three times – first in a purple-ish colour, then in silver and finally in black. The red showed through the other two colours ever so slightly, and wherever it wasn’t multiple coats of the multiple colours, the red even speckled through the black.

“Don’t you get it?! You’re what I’m trying to get away from!”

Liam stepped forward, and Zayn didn’t step away. The space between them closed.

“You…” Zayn fumbled. “You and all this other bullshit! I can’t get away from you.”

Liam stepped forward again, letting Zayn continue.

“I can’t look at you, Liam, it hurts. It hurts because I can’t forget, I can’t forget that night, or any of the other nights, or Perrie or…”

Liam was standing gentlemanly still, letting Zayn trail off by his own account.

“You can’t just pretend it’s all gonna be okay again, Liam,” Zayn’s jaw set, features hardening, breathing in Liam’s cologne. “What are you going to do, kiss me? Fuck me? And then what?”

Liam’s eyes caught the heart, and the L, again. He thought of his own house, with all of the pictures stashed away in a drawer. All of the posters and Polaroids of a time it didn’t hurt. Because Zayn was right, it hurt – it hurt Liam, too. It hurt because neither of them could forget but now they were both trapped, only…

“What if it didn’t have to hurt?” Liam breathed. Zayn shook his head.

“It already does.”

Zayn stepped away, the metaphorical bubble surrounding them popping like air bubbles in Liam’s heart – little tugs and snaps that weren’t stopping. Someone had shaken up all the blood in his chest and was popping all the oxygen away. Pop, pop, snap, pop, snap.

“I would like for you to leave now, Liam,” Zayn waved his hand to the door.

It all felt like deja vu of the worst kind, the kind that wasn’t just a feeling you’d been there before – it was knowing you had been there. Liam could remember the past Zayn just as easily as he saw the current Zayn, both of them ordering him out after he said something stupid.

Only this time he wasn’t going to go back to his hotel room and cry.

 

** April 21, 2015 **

Zayn eyed the parcel in his hands warily.

He had received a small cardboard box – stamped and posted – sent from one ‘James Lightyear’. Zayn wanted to roll his eyes so hard because Liam wasn’t even trying to be subtle. ‘James Lightyear’ was a fake name they had joked around about ages ago, when they were all setting up fake names to use inconspicuously, and Liam had made a joke and for some reason they managed to convince him to actually use it. The names were for hotels, for account details, for anything that went to the public they didn’t want their names plastered over.

Middle name, followed by something spectacularly boring or stupid. Zayn was pretty sure Louis’ was still William Shakespeare.

But this was from one ‘James Lightyear’, which made Zayn want to vomit not only because the name was _that bad_ , but also just the concept that it was a package from Liam. His gut twisted and he wished he had said yes to the meds so he could have an excuse to pump himself up on Xanax right now. He was also glad he said no so he could excuse the twist in his gut on the lack of drugs in his blood.

Zayn put it on the counter, of the kitchen, and moved straight towards the coffee machine. He fully intended to leave the parcel behind, refuse to open it, refuse to acknowledge its existence, at least until that night or the next moment he felt particularly masochistic and had spare time to wallow in self-pity.

He stood before the coffee machine, flipped it on, and leant against the countertop for ten seconds more before the curiosity and anticipation was all too much. He needed to open it. Even if he never replied or talked about it again, he needed to open it.

Zayn barely even realised how quickly his fingers were moving until he processed just how frustrated he was when they got stuck ripping the taped seal on the cardboard off. He forced his breathing to slow and found a pair of scissors to open the box up, softly and gently tipping the contents onto the benchtop.

His eyes swept over the contents briefly and Zayn wanted to cry, even just briefly, because _fuck Liam_. Fuck him nine ways to Sunday.

Sitting on the bench were three DVDs, still shining in their store-bought-new plastic, three movies that looked exactly like something Zayn wanted to watch right now and probably over and over again even though he’d never seen them before. Unknown, probably with an excellent, fast-paced and deep plot, with good quality filming and acting.

Sitting atop the DVDs, in Liam’s scrappy handwriting and awful lack of English skills, was a little note that read, “I miss being your best friend pls let me come over to wach films”.

Fuck Liam.

 

** May 1, 2015  **

It’s raining, because it’s England, and England is always raining. It was May, which is usually England’s nicest weather, and usually that meant no rain. Usually. But it was raining anyway.

And really, whether it was or wasn’t has no relevance whatsoever, but Zayn loved the rain, and he loved the mood it was casting over the scene in his living room right now. Because it wasn’t melancholy – he was much too acclimatized to the gloomy precipitation to feel like it was miserable weather – it was comforting instead. It gave a nice, relatively steady soundtrack to the scene, and made the light inside his house seem brighter, made the blankets seem warmer, and Liam’s presence seem more permanent.

Zayn had, admittedly, greatly procrastinated contacting Liam again, but if Liam cared he didn’t show it. He had just chuckled softly down the phone line and asked what day and time Zayn wanted him there, making sure to be careful of the tour, still, but he had until June before they were going again so they had plenty of time to sit around watching films with one another. They had plenty of time to try and fix whatever the fuck was going on before they had to be separated again, and Zayn was sure that Liam was going to try and do just that, only he wasn’t.

He wasn’t pushing into Zayn’s space, or bringing up _that_ topic in conversation, or looking at him in _that_ certain way, or crossing any of those boundaries.

He was just sitting, on a separate couch, laughing with Zayn between films, offering to get drinks, retaliating with thrown snacks when a kernel of popcorn hit his head part-way through the first film they had put on.

Liam, Zayn realised, was trying to get their friendship back, not their relationship.

Which, Zayn realised with a jolt, that he didn’t entirely know if he liked or not. With a certain level of dissonance and uneasiness, Zayn discovered he wanted Liam pushing into his space, he wanted the topic brought up, he wanted to be looked at.

He wanted to kiss Liam.

He wanted to fuck Liam.

He wanted Liam, in any and all ways and he didn’t know whether to hate himself or not for it just yet.

Because four years was a long time to be in love with someone, especially when you’ve only known them for not even a full five yet, and especially when four years is almost a fifth of your entire life.

They were halfway through ‘Youth In Revolt’ when all of the wanting and wishing and regretting spilt over the tipping point inside of Zayn, and before he could stop himself the words were spilling as well.

“Sorry,” he whispered, just loud enough to be heard over François’s fiascos, not looking at Liam. He couldn’t, he couldn’t.

He could, however, feel Liam’s eyes transfixed on him, confused and curious.

“I’m sorry for pushing you away,” he elaborated, “And for saying all those things.”

Liam, until this point, had been itching, aching, to say something to Zayn. To cross the room into his space, to sit by him and not by the window, to ask and to answer, to spill about Sophia and console about Perrie and hope that at some point in the night they found themselves over again and okay again in close proximity.

He was barely focused on the film – he had seen it before – because he kept imagining different scenarios, wild possibilities of how to get what he wanted, how to put himself nearer to Zayn smoothly and safely and respectfully.

But this, this sudden and abrupt apology, this was not what Liam wanted. 

He didn’t respond, refusing to grant forgiveness because Zayn had absolutely nothing to be sorry for. That was the entire reason for sending the note and waiting for a reply, for being persistent but patient with Zayn; Liam wanted things to work out but he didn’t want either of them to be uncomfortable or rushed because that just denoted the entire point of them being ‘okay’ again.

But Zayn kept going, taking his silence as acceptance.

“I just-”

“Don’t,” Liam cut him off, not letting it go on. He didn’t know what to say, he just let his mount open and his brain spill through. “Don’t say things like that, Zee, it’s not your fault.”

“But I-” was the one who did this, that and the other thing, Liam was anticipating the self-deprecating admission.

“Didn’t start this whole… thing,” Liam sighed out, finishing Zayn’s sentence in a completely different way to how Zayn was intending.

There was a violent quiet between them that the burning car on the screen wasn’t filling. Liam felt the self-destructive _need_ to as his eyes became transfixed on the pixels that made up Michael Cera’s face.

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Liam also wouldn’t take his eyes off the film, though Zayn was looking at him, and he knew that. “I’m sorry for what I did. All the times I left, physically and in the way that actually matters.”

Nick Twisp was the one running from the police, but Liam was the one with a sick feeling in his stomach.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the film. Liam watched as Zayn’s mouth opened and closed several times, he watched out of the corner of his eye as Zayn obviously decided against himself and kept quiet. Liam, admittedly, forgot the film was even playing, filling his min with something to say, something to do.

But he did, said, nothing.

When the film ended, reality finally came into Liam’s focus. It felt live five minutes had passed, not forty.

“Did we fuck up?” Zayn asked, finally, quietly, the credits playing through but neither of them moving to press stop.

“I hope not,” Liam answered, honestly. “I never want to fuck up so bad that I lose you, ever.”

Zayn’s eyes went wide in an open and innocent way that Liam hadn’t seen in years.

 

** May 1, 2015 (9:15pm) **

“Hey?” Harry called out into the house, waiting for the returned, ‘yeah?’ from Louis and continuing once it sounded, “Have you heard from Zayn lately?”

Louis stepped out of the hallway, rubbing a towel at his hair. Harry only glanced at him briefly before rolling his eyes at Louis’ abrupt nakedness, which Louis pointedly ignored.

“Yeah. Nothing much of mention?” he pulled the towel around his waist in submission to Harry’s gestures at his general trunk area. “Why?”

Harry shrugged. “I heard from Niall a while ago that Liam was going to go over to Zayn’s. I was just wondering if Zayn said anything about it.”

Louis scrunched up his nose in a nonchalant dismissiveness and made his way back down the hallway with a shrug and a called out, “He hasn’t said anything to me!”

 

**May 1, 2015 (9:16pm)**

Liam, if he was honest, was not entirely sure how he had made it into this position. Theoretically, he completely understood that he must of crossed the room and settled himself into Zayn’s space, somehow managed to get their lips to touch and Zayn reciprocation escalated that to their current situation which was – in simple terms – making out on the couch like a couple of teenagers.

But while he knew theoretically and logically how, he still didn’t fully grasp the practical complexities of doing so. Or the why. Not really, at least.

Zayn’s hands coming up through his short hair blanked out any intricate thought patterns Liam was currently transmitting, leaving him blank and functioning only on the orders of ‘Zayn’, ‘kiss’ and more ‘Zayn’. Okay.

Zayn’s brain must have taken up the complex thoughts Liam had managed to dismiss.

“Stop,” he pushed at Liam’s chest. “Are we really doing this? Again?”

Liam blinked. “Well. Yes. A little.”

Zayn rolled his eyes and Liam stayed firmly put so that he could not be pushed away and Zayn would not leave their little space.

“We don’t have to have sex,” Liam breathed. “You know that, right?”

“Does it matter?” Zayn put a hand to his face. “Does it really matter if we have sex, or if we just kiss? We’re still doing…” he waved a hand between their chests, “… _this_ , whatever this is.”

Liam felt overcome with something suddenly, and he couldn’t quite name it, but in a split decision he voted against carefully counting his words, and he just started _talking_.

“Does it matter if we’re doing this again? Honestly, really, I mean, who’s getting hurt from this? And, more importantly, who’s getting hurt if we keep trying to be apart? I meant what I said, about not wanting to mess up so bad that I lose you.”

Because he needed Zayn.

“I mean, it hurts more to keep away from you than what comes with being with you. The media management, Sophia, Perrie, the backlash. I can handle that.”

He wanted Zayn.

“I can’t handle keeping away from you anymore. And I know you want me, too, Zayn, don’t try and hide it.”

And Zayn had to see that.

“Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t try – properly,” Liam breathed deeply, “Because I love you so much, and I’m so sick of throwing that away or pretending it’s not there.”

Zayn’s eyes, which had been narrowed and transfixed on a wall, widened and met with Liam’s. He obviously either hadn’t known, or certainly wasn’t expecting such an admission. Liam sympathised, because he hadn’t been expecting it either.

“You…” Zayn exhaled heavily, closing eyes. “Liam, please.”

“Zayn, I mean it,” his voice sounded like it was begging. Liam knew what bomb Zayn was about to drop on his hope, the same ‘don’t say things you don’t mean’ abrasive front that he put up to avoid being hurt.

Zayn waited for a belated pause, eyes raking over Liam’s face. He looked like he was about to cry – Liam had seen it enough times to know – but there were no tears yet. Just threats.

“You-…” he broke himself off, then held up his hand, pinky finger upright and at attention, “You have to promise me it’s not going to be like before.”

Liam shifted his weight so he could align their pinkies immediately. “It is never, ever, going to be like before. I want to have a real, proper relationship. Nothing less.”

Zayn pulled back his hand before Liam could wrap their fingers, face stern.

“Liam, I mean it. And I don’t mean, ‘don’t walk out on each other’ again, I mean after we fight we talk it out like adults, and that-”

“Always,” Liam pushed their hands back together. “Zayn, anything. Anything. I told you, I love you.”

Zayn’s eyes were getting a little wet no, and Liam felt close to the same, if he were being entirely honest with himself.

“I could be making you promise to do something awful,” Zayn chuckled half-heartedly, nodding his head at the pinky-promise that Liam didn’t entirely listen to. Liam laughed shortly, smile staying.

“I trust you,” he admitted earnestly, and that suddenly meant more to Zayn than any of the talk about love. And Zayn trusted him too, all of the things they had said, the promise they had made. Zayn trusted Liam to keep it.

“I love you, too,” he whispered gently, other hand making its way to the side of Liam’s face and cupping gently.

Liam whispered the words back, as did Zayn, hands grasping and gripping at each other and both of them saying the same words over and over like it was all they could understand suddenly, both marvelling at the fact that the words weren’t seeming to lose their power. Contradictorily, the sentiment grew stronger and stronger.

 

**\---**

 

They had sex that night, despite them resolving they didn’t need to and therefore wouldn’t, it still happened. Zayn, out of habit and fear and the ever present anxiety overwhelming his logical decisions, gripped at Liam so tight afterwards, non-verbally begging him to stay in the bed forever, or at least until Zayn was getting up also.  

Liam had shifted their bodies so that their chests were pressed right up together, just enough room to breathe and settle their heads comfortably, clinging onto Zayn just as tight. Zayn, miraculously, woke first, sitting up and soaking in the sunlight pouring through the window, but not leaving the bed until Liam woke up. Well, not leaving the bed until after the glorious morning sex following Liam’s waking, at least.

Their first fight was on the fifth of May, four days after they initially decided to be together. Liam doesn’t even remember how it began, but he knew it ended with him getting in his car and driving back to his place, watching the feud Zayn had initially been having with Louis over text escalate aggressively on Twitter, and Liam realising that he had left Zayn. He got in his car and drove back, stood on the doorstep waiting for an apology before he scooped Zayn up into his arms and sat with him the rest of the night to talk over why it had all unfolded.

They struggled back and forth over the year, between rumours and surrounding heartbreak, an album release without Zayn that Liam struggled with but Zayn himself liked a lot more than he wanted to admit. He found it funny, mostly. Liam didn’t.

Over New Years, Liam noticed all of the effort that Zayn was putting in to them while he had been touring, and decided to turn their anniversary of heartache into a good memory, taking him out for a perfect night and telling Zayn just how much he loved him at every opportunity he could get, making damn well sure that Zayn was sated and euphoric went he fell asleep. _And_ when he woke up.

In the following weeks of that month, Liam came home ( _home_ , holy shit he was calling Zayn’s flat home, now, he sounded like Louis) to a lovely surprise that landed him as engaged and when he was confronted by a massive swarm of paps he wasn’t even mad or overwhelmed. He had to squash the urge to scream to the world about how wonderful his life is and how much he loved and cared for such a beautiful, beautiful man that he was now going to marry (Christ, what had he gotten himself into, now he’s beginning to sound just like Louis).

Liam was relieved – for the first time in a long time – to hear someone ask about Zayn.

“I love Zayn,” was what he said, which was true. Platonically and romantically and to the very depths of his soul, Liam loved Zayn in all different kinds of ways.

One night, whilst cooking up pizza, Zayn had played ‘18’ on his phone for a laugh. Which, Liam did. They both did. But they didn’t change the song, was the thing, they let it play and they both let themselves listen to it properly for the first time, and Liam finally didn’t feel so detached from the happiness he had been trying for. Zayn didn’t feel like he was one step behind the game, for the first time ever.

They had finally found one another, in the ways that it mattered, found the love they had for one another back when the love had first begun. Pure and always constant, if a little unpredictable.

But it was theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this part, by the way, is like 9000+ words, and the other two were only 3000-4000 each.
> 
> anywho, THANK YOU ALL FOR READING I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH. if you wanna come find me to talk pretty much anything my usernames are below. 
> 
> tumblr: softer-side-of-unbearable  
> twitter: koffkoffstyles


	4. bonus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just how the conversation with harry and louis in the last chapter was meant to go, but i thought it was too vulgar/explicit/unnecessary. but its funny, so.

**[KIDDIES LOOK AWAY.]**

 

 

“Hey?” Harry called out into the house, waiting for the returned, ‘yeah?’ from Louis and continuing once it sounded, “Have you heard from Zayn lately?”

Louis stepped out of the hallway, dry, with a towel in one hand. Harry only glanced at him briefly before rolling his eyes at Louis’ abrupt nakedness, which Louis simply couldn’t not ignore because-

“Hey, what? You’re naked too!” he pointed out Harry’s hypocrisy, sitting right there blatantly alongside his balls. “And you’re cooking!”

“I’m a clean naked,” Harry retorted, gestured very specifically to the mostly-dry semen on Louis’ chest that he hadn’t been in the shower to clean off just yet. “That’s gross.”

Louis looked down, then up at Harry, then down again, then rolled his own eyes, huffed and held up his hands.

“Okay, most of this is yours, may I point out.”

“It’s still disgusting.”

“We’re getting off topic, this started with Zayn?”

Harry made an ‘oh!’ face as he was reminded why exactly he had pulled Louis away from his task of showering. “That’s right. So, have you? Like, heard from him?”

“Yeah. Nothing much of mention?” Louis leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. “Why?”

Harry shrugged. “I heard from Niall a while ago that Liam was going to go over to Zayn’s. I was just wondering if Zayn said anything about it.”

Louis scrunched up his nose in a nonchalant dismissiveness and made his way back down the hallway with a shrug and a called out, “He hasn’t said anything to me!”


End file.
